Crucial to my point, is what I meant. The phrasing I used reflected the early part of the sentence, where I said ‘doesn’t matter [is not crucial] to you’. I wasn’t implying it doesn’t matter to him because he’s not personally acquainted with Ms. Todd, nor was I suggesting that I am and that my participation in these discussions stems from that.
In the articles where it says she claims to have a history of mental illness, what kind of mental illness do they mean? As I’ve said repeatedly, I’m responding only to those quotes, and because I’m only a fake psychic I cannot invent more details than have been provided. Would you rather I called it ‘schmental schmillness’ to distinguish it from an actual diagnosis, or is using the exact wording from the resources available to us okay? Do you claim there are no kinds of mental illness which could result in this behavior without the person in question being an institutionalized vegetable for their entire life prior?
All I have to say is that it’s pretty apparent to me that Ensign Edison has very little experience of young women because I’ve known quite a few of them who’ve tried stunts of this nature without needing to be “mentally ill” to justify it. It’s not terribly uncommon behavior, in fact. And every damned one of them has been genuinely shocked and amazed when it blew up in their faces. Foresight and judgement are not well developed character traits in teenagers, which this little twat is not far from being. I’m very impressed with the rational scepticism of the police in this case and applaud their judgement and fair handling of a situation which was apparently being fanned for all it was worth by outside entities eager to blow it into a much larger conflagration than it was.
Back off, Frank. It is entirely possible that EE is mentally ill and therefore not responsible for the content of his posts. In fact, prove to me he’s *not *having an “episode” before you attack him again. Unless of course, you enjoy picking on handicapped people, such as EE and Ashley Todd.
Something that might be getting lost here is that it is possible to be mentally ill and be morally and legally culpable for a deliberate, premeditated crime.
Something else that should be obvious to everyone: crazy and racist are not exclusive.
I don’t understand all the fuss about this. She is obviously either a sick woman or a very twisted person. Had she really been telling the truth, the her (now hypothetical) attacker would have been equally sick.
I don’t see why the media should make any kind of inference towards McCain or Obama. So what he called her? You don’t think if Obama got a story that a black lady was at an ATM when some redneck grabbed her, called her a “nigger”, and carved an “M” in her face that he would call her with sympathy? Or would he just know that she was lying?
Unless some of you are trying to say that this is a McCain conspiracy here, I don’t see the implication for the McCain campaign.
According to Fox News, McCain’s campaign will now be forever tied to race baiting. Link.
In all seriousness, McCain’s campaign at minimum has been conspicuously tolerant of race baiting, and their reaction to this hoax confirms that view.
Die-hard Repubs of course don’t care. They either sympathize with the racist point of view or feel that the ends justify the means. I suppose some are in denial about what’s happening; they’re turning their eyes away from the hate that some McCain supporters are sowing, and pretending it doesn’t exist.
But moderates do care. The McCain campaign is not looking good at all, from an ethical point of view.
Firstly, as i said earlier in this thread (or was it in the GD thread about this issue?), the fact that so many people were suspicious of this story from the start might have led the McCain/Palin camp to at least hold off for 24 hours before rushing to make sympathetic phone calls. Their sympathy would have been just as useful a day later, and if they had waited to find out all the facts, they would have discovered that the whole story was bullshit.
I don’t blame McCain or Palin for that. I actually think their advisers probably did them a disservice here.
Second, and much more importantly, the McCain people in Pennsylvania were feeding inflammatory quotes to the news media very early in this whole scenario, at a time when the police were still being very cautious about the whole thing, and well before any substantial conclusions could be drawn.
You might say that these people’s stupidity is not McCain’s fault, and at a certain level i agree, but the fact is that if people actually working for the campaign do shit like this, then some of the shit will stick to the person whom they’re representing.
A sincere appreciation of the value of a cigarette…?
Damn, you said ‘when’ and I misread that as ‘what’. [Emily Latella]Nevermind[/Emily Latella]
Or maybe she’s just recklessly irresponsible and drawn to like minded people. You know, like McCain/Palin and their Campaign '08, for example. Hey, anything is possible and in the course of time all will come to light.
Still, if I lived in PA and I thought that the campaign of one candidate was trying to huckster my vote through a cheap ploy, I’d probably remember it come election day. That and given that Noam Scheiber from the New Republic (audio link cite; you’ll want the 10/24 full broadcast; text link not available) has indicated that every likely scenario he’s seen where McCain wins hinges on him taking Pennsylvania, this whole incident rates a serious “Hmmmm”. :dubious:
Conspiracy Theorists: But then it wouldn’t be that obvious!
Conspiracy Theorists#2: This is what made it real! If she’s faking, she would just crave an O instead!
What makes sense? I don’t automatically believe the paranoid bleatings of internet jackasses when they present no evidence or logical support for their crazy theories, so my motivation must be that I’m the actual target of those theories? That’s interesting. I guess I’m also the World Trade Center.
No, you’re more akin to someone who’ll believe the “9/11 Truthers” until someone provides concrete evidence they didn’t bring down the towers using telekinesis and firecrackers in all the toilets.
Because I don’t believe that Ms. Todd deliberately set out to cause racial unrest (which as I’ve repeatedly said is the theory I’m waiting for more evidence to believe)?
If that is what you meant, then I apologize; I also don’t think it’s clear that was her primary intent. I was referring to the assumption that she’s mentally ill and thus not responsible for her actions, which (in the absence of supporting evidence) seems a bit convenient to me. She could, for example, just be a pathetic attention whore, and not necessarily someone looking to foment race riots.